What the kingdom claims to offer is a lead in the "war on terror". Indeed, Saudi Arabia's rulers have rallied to the cause, deploying their ultimate weapon: a barrage of fatwas, or religious edicts, issued by prominent Wahhabi clerics.

Osama Bin Laden's latest video in September, after three years of invisibility, stirred not only talk in the west about the colour and shape of his beard, but action by Saudi Wahhabi leaders and disciples. The "war of the fatwas" began immediately after the video appeared. If al-Qaida is launching an offensive, no one is better placed to counter it than the Wahhabi establishment, which mounted its assault from a strong strategic position: the Muslim Holy Land during Ramadan.

These clerical forces are abundantly financed by oil money. They have well-resourced websites and satellite television stations that are financed by the king and other Saudi royals. Exclusive fatwas can be launched 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Indeed, one satellite station, owned by a prominent Wahhabi cleric, Salman al-Odah, is called simply "fatwa". Since September, al-Odah has launched an electronic attack from his website Islam Today on Bin Laden and other "illegitimate jihadists" for usurping religious leadership. More importantly, the Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, the highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia, fired off a fatwa forbidding unauthorised jihad abroad for Saudis.

Does this signal a fundamental change in Saudi policy? Has the Wahhabi establishment begun to abandon its fanatical, millenarian brand of Islam? Does the clerics' volte face amount to a victory for US foreign policy in the Middle East? Western advocates of "engagement" with Arab "moderates" would certainly like to think so. But nothing could be further from the truth.

For decades, the Saudi Wahhabis have endorsed, encouraged, and financed jihad. Sheikh al-Sheikh and his memorable predecessor, Sheikh Bin Baz, who once declared that the Earth was flat, actively supported jihad in Afghanistan during the 1980s to fight the Soviet infidels. This was, of course, in line with US policy. Thousands of imams in mosques across Saudi Arabia were called upon to rally fighters to the "holy causeı" In effect they constructed the domestic support structure for what became al-Qaida. Bin Laden was one of their proudest achievements. However, the jihadists mistakenly believed that their task was to take the fight to all imperialist infidels. They misunderstood their masters' relationship to the US.

Saudi Wahhabi fatwas recognising and extolling the jihadists' efforts were still being issued as late as November 2005. Indeed they were issued by al-Odah, along with 25 other prominent "clerics of the awakening" who specifically legitimised jihad in Iraq. At the time, the Wahhabis were terrified of growing Shiıa power in Iraq, and their fatwas reiterated the chilling maxim: "to kill a Shiı gets one more rewards than killing a Christian or a Jew".

This latest round of fatwas comes at a time when the failure, from Pakistan to Iraq, of purely military strategies has called for new political approaches aimed at creating an arc of stability in the region. Saudi Arabia's response to the failure of US foreign policy in the region has been religious ideological warfare. The rulers can buy Eurofighters for billions of dollars, but their most effective weapons have always been ideological: fatwas-dot-com is only the latest addition to this formidable arsenal.

This is not the first time the Wahhabi clerics have been useful in supporting US-Saudi interests. During the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Sheikh Bin Baz twisted existing beliefs by issuing a fatwa legitimising the protection of Saudi Arabia by western infidel troops.

Now that the US really needs its "moderate" Arab allies, Saudi Arabia is keen to exercise maximum influence over events in the region. Condoleezza Rice warned last summer that a US failure in Iraq would be disastrous for its regional allies. The Saudi rulers know what US and British withdrawal from Iraq would imply: the loss of strategic advantage to their ideological nemesis, Iran.

Saudi strategy is therefore adapting itself now to a significantly reduced US and British military presence in Iraq, and anticipating new Iraqi politics in which al-Qaida - already being marginalised by US rapprochement with Iraqi Sunni forces - has no place. This could lead to blowback in the kingdom as Saudi jihadists return home with new terrorist skills and experience. The billion-dollar Saudi border fence currently under construction would not be able to hold back this tide.

So, while al-Qaida was a Saudi creation, today the ruling family must show solidarity with their Wahhabi co-rulers to fight the radicals. The fact that the same clerics who called for jihad now are forbidding it should come as no surprise. The alliance between the Al Saud and the Wahhabi clerical establishment is based on the need to ensure the survival of their joint state - an imperative to which religious principles have always been subordinated.

However, the Saudi rulers' ideological dependence on the Wahhabis recalls the sorcerer's apprentice. The Wahhabis have loyally served the house of Saud, and the US by proxy. But, as with their spiritual offspring, al-Qaida, it may be only a matter of time and opportunity before they turn against the Saudi regime.